Thursday, 11 April 2013

Heavy Metal: An Update...

As I was speaking of my piercing only yesterday, I thought I might as well do a little update. Hopefully it'll also prove helpful to anyone who may stumble across it whilst researching piercing aftercare (which, incidentally, is exactly how I discovered my favourite YouTuber KinkiNikki4. If you get a moment, I highly recommend you check her out!).

So, it's been (counts on fingers...) twelve days now since I got it done, and it seems to be healing well. As far as I can tell. The pictures below were taken earlier on, so you can see for yourselves:

Please excuse the Mullet...

I had a few niggles with it a couple of nights ago where it felt swollen, itchy and bruised to the touch. Oddly the inside of my ear - heading into the canal- also got really hot, but there was no visible redness or signs of a brewing infection.

The following day I did a ten minute sea salt soak in the afternoon and then another in the evening. That must have done the trick as, thankfully, it's stopped playing up. There's been no itchiness since and it no longer feels bruised. I can only assume that means the swelling is starting to subside. It still looks a fraction bigger than my right-hand Tragus, but only if you're right up close and intently looking for differences.

As an aside, I don't literally soak my ear as some people suggest- I had an outer ear infection eight years ago and my ear gets inflamed if I get too much water in it, so sticking it in a glass of salt water would have been a big and uncomfortable no-no- instead I allow a glass of boiling salty water to cool (I use Maldon in case you're wondering. I have a snobby ear, what can I say?) and dunk a cotton wool pad in and then apply it over my Tragus like a compress. I re-dunk the pad when it's cooling off, but otherwise it's kept there between five - ten minutes.

Of course every piercing is unique, and everybody's rate of healing is different, so what might work for one person may be totally wrong for you. In my opinion (and I can't stress this enough, it is just that: my opinion) as long as it looks fine, there's so obvious signs of irritation and you're observing good hand hygiene, then cleaning it multiple times a day may actually be to the detriment of the piercing. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why mine acted up: I'd been a bit too fastidious with the aftercare, constantly applying the drops, cleaning with a Q-Tip and doing three soaks throughout the
day.

Obviously, my ear didn't like that and just wanted to be left alone. Now I've backed off it seems a lot
happier. The laissez-faire approach clearly works in my case.

I'll do another update when it hits the four week mark. For now, though, it's coming along nicely (and I still bloomin' love it).